Recently, according to an increase in kinds of denomination values and an increase in storage capacity of bills that ATMs handle, bill handling apparatuses equipped with as many large bill boxes as possible have been proposed. For example, JP-A-H8 (1996)-221636 and JP-A-2009-110230 disclose bill handling apparatuses in which a plurality of bill boxes is arranged side by side at the lower part of the apparatus and the other components are collectively arranged in the upper part of the apparatus.
In the bill handling apparatus disclosed in JP-A-H8 (1996)-221636, a bill receiving and dispensing port, a bill discriminating unit, and a temporary storage unit are arranged in the upper part of the apparatus, while a longitudinal loading box and a plurality of bill storage boxes are arranged from the front to the rear in the lower part. The components are connected by a one-way conveying path. The conveying path of the one-way conveying path will be complicated. In particular, since it is necessary to convey received bills and bills to be dispensed in the same direction inside the bill discriminating unit, an exclusive conveying path for always conveying the bills to the inlet of the bill discriminating unit is required. That is, the bill receiving and dispensing port and the temporary storage unit are arranged in one loop-like conveying route connected to the bill discriminating unit while the bill storage box is arranged in another loop-like conveying route connected to the bill discriminating unit. Therefore, there are disadvantages that the volume of structure forming the conveying path increases relative to the entire apparatus and the size of the bill storage box decreases relative to the size of the entire apparatus.
In the bill handling apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2009-110230, a bill receiving and dispensing port is arranged on the front of the upper part of the apparatus, a temporary storage unit and a bill discriminating unit are arranged side by side in behind the bill receiving and dispensing port, a loading box, a reject box, and a bill storage box are arranged longitudinally side by side, and the components are connected to a two-way conveying path.
Further, according to the bill handling apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2000-172903, the components are connected to a two-way conveying path to reduce the conveying path, similar to the bill handling apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2009-110230. For example, in FIG. 27 (second embodiment), a temporary storage box 40, a reject box 65, and a bill loading and collecting box 83 are arranged in the rear part of the apparatus, the rejection box 65 that functions as a receiving box stores non-return bills and bill left behind from the temporary storage box 40 in receiving bills, and stores bills rejected from the temporary storage box 40 in dispensing bills.
In the bill handling apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2000-172903, the bills fed from the temporary storage box 40 cannot be collected to the reject box and necessarily stored in the recycle box, even if bills not conveyed are detected after passing the bill discriminating unit. Therefore, failure in stacking the bills may be caused in the bills in the recycle box and problems in conveyance, such as jam, may be generated in feeding bills from the recycle box at the next time.
In the bill handling apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2009-110230, since a mechanism to switch between the reject box and the loading box is provided, it is possible to prevent problems in conveying bills after the bills pass the bill discriminating unit, which may be generated in JP-A-2000-172903. However, the apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2009-110230 requires an exclusive conveying path 56 for conveying bills from the loading box to the bill discriminating unit, which make the conveying path complicated. Further, in this configuration, it is required to implement a three-story conveying path composed of two two-way conveying paths 51b and 58 and one one-way conveying path 55 between the bottom of the temporary storage unit and the top of the recycle box, such that it is difficult to reduce the height of the apparatus, and both achieve a compact apparatus and increase the capacity of the recycle box.